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Crossroads to Somewhere | |
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Li’l Tokyo is a testament and tribute to the history of Japanese in California. San Jose maintains a thriving neighborhood by virtue of property owners who, for the most part, have refused the lure of real estate profits during boom years. San Francisco is the direct opposite. Changing ownerships, large and small, have reduced its Japantown to but a shell of its once thriving community. Seattle is an example of deep pioneer family roots that weathered all manner of adversity; today still a viable, if not vibrant, ethnic enclave. At one time there were small settlements up and down the Pacific, wherever original Issei settled as immigrants. Imperial Valley’s Brawley and El Centro, mid-state laborers in Bakersfield, Fresno, Delano and Salinas lived in camps of itinerant bachelors. Unwanted in mainstream neighborhoods, business entrepreneurs emerged from necessity and restricted commercial ventures launched by and for the immigrants. |
| W T Wimpy Hiroto | |
Immigrants from Japan’s Wakayama-ken fishing villages shunned the labor of railroad building, horticulture and farms, seeking their version of the American dream along the coastline. Like their land brethren they, too, found a reception less than welcome, but the lure of the Pacific waters held them captive to the cannery industry. Without boats they were forced to do the most menial of labor to survive at first. By virtue of hard work and perseverance they quickly advanced to the status of best fishermen. Thus was born Fish Harbor on Terminal Island with picture brides raising second-generation citizen Nisei. When the first bomb fell on Pearl Harbor, Terminal Island was a bustling; self-contained community where fish was queen and cannery king, with a population of approximately 3,000 Japanese. Surprisingly, the majority was now Nisei as the families grew (if not thrived) and their own boats now brought the harvest to the canneries where their wives and children labored. The prosperous fishing fleets fed the success and growth of Fish Harbor: restaurants, grocery stores, pool halls, beauty shops, even a hotel. (Once children completed elementary school they had to ferry to San Pedro to continue their education.) The stories of how the bombing of Pearl Harbor impacted our various communities have been an endless litany of sorrow and suffering. The saga of Terminal Island is rarely recited but it stands as one of the best (worst?) examples of wartime hysteria and its devastating toll. Terminal Island was the site of Long Beach Naval Station, the home port of many of the battleships sunk on Dec. 7. At the other end was Terminal Island prison. Between the two was Fish Harbor. Next door, within a whiff of the fish odor but not too close was, ironically, Los Angeles Yacht Club, the home of opulence and excess, When 12/7 dawned Fish Harbor was devastated as much as Pearl, if not more so. At least the Oahu port eventually recovered. By early afternoon all Japanese were herded into their homes, many concerned about husbands and sons still out at sea. (There were reports of fishermen bloodied and beaten upon docking, their boats and catch confiscated.) Before the day was over the island was teeming with shore patrol, military police and FBI agents. The alien roundup had begun in earnest; the Terminal Island prison population suddenly Asian. Homes were ransacked of shortwave radios, weapons, cameras and anything in Japanese writing. All activity was suspended. No work. No business allowed to open. No access to the mainland via the ferry. Everyone was a suspect, a prisoner. On Jan. 29, 1942, U.S. Attorney General Francis Biddle announced the boundaries of the restricted Pacific military zones and ordered the removal of all enemy aliens from those areas. Terminal Island was an obvious target but more than 600 Issei were already in custody; practically every male family head on the island had been arrested in the initial sweep. (No provisions were made for the care and feeding of the beleaguered families; compounding the hardships was the outright hostility of former Slav and Filipino friends and co-workers.) Executive Order 9066 was signed into law Feb. 18. Fish Harbor rumors of Dec. 8 had finally become a reality to the rest of the coastal areas. And as if that historical advent wasn’t bad enough, six days later a rogue Japanese submarine surfaced off the Santa Barbara to lob several ineffective shells along the shoreline! A fearful local populace was further panicked the next night when air raid sirens and frantic searchlights pierced the tense darkness. And then all hell broke loose as every antiaircraft battery in the Los Angeles basin began to fire at an unseen enemy. (This writer did a research thesis on the stance of the Los Angeles Times prior to the evacuation; it’s editorial position was definitely “yellow peril” but not as vehement as Hearst publications.) But it’s reporting of the purported air raid was almost comical. While recounting the concerted action of the many AA batteries and prompt response to the imminent threat of invasion, almost every front page summary of events failed to mention that no one had ever reported sighting an aircraft, enemy or otherwise!) But the damage had been done. That day, Feb. 26, armed and helmeted soldiers knocked on every Fish Harbor door, handing out a quickly mimeographed directive ordering every person of Japanese descent off the island by Feb. 28. They were given 48 hours to evacuate!!! Picture, if you can, being told to leave your home in two days. Imagine the plight of fatherless families, already destitute from two months of house arrest, having to relocate to an equally hostile mainland, before two night falls. (Those of us more fortunate had all of 10 days to disperse.) There were no trucks, transportation or assistance provided. Every hour was precious as families frantically had to determine what to take, what to sell, where to go. Adding insult to insult the government assigned an agent to check all sales for tax purposes! (It has been said that some destroyed and burned property rather than sell to the scavengers. Boats had already been confiscated, bank accounts frozen, storage of goods impossible, shipping of property to the mainland haphazard at best even if time permitted. When the last straggler left Tuna street a piano stood lonely and defiant at curb’s edge. Thus did Fish Harbor disappear from the map of Terminal Island, never to be resurrected. But the tragedy doesn’t end with the last ferry arriving at San Pedro. Within two months the disenfranchised were forced to disperse yet second excruciating time! After sixty days of wandering uncertainty, most still oblivious of where the patriarch was held incognito, the Islanders became a segment of the 10,000 interned at Poston I, Arizona, for the duration. The hegira of Fish Harbor was completed. No subsequent study that I am aware of has been made to trace the survivors of this journey. There have been Terminal Island reunions held in the past and Wakayama-ken picnics, although now but a memory, used to be well attended affairs. Some families could get no closer than San Pedro after The War. An oral history of Fish Harbor? Maybe there is still time as long as there remains a Ryono or Tatsumi or Yamashiro among others to interview. |
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